


Déjà Allez-Vous

by middyblue (daisyblaine)



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: 1x08 coda, 6x08 coda, Canon Compliant, Character Development, Episode: s01e08 Allez-Vous, Episode: s06e08 The Presidential Suite, Gen, Introspection, M/M, Missing Scene, POV Stevie Budd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:28:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28553895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisyblaine/pseuds/middyblue
Summary: Stevie sees an opportunity to mess with David after he's "tested" the Allez-Vous bronzer. It pays off five years later.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose, Stevie Budd & David Rose, Stevie Budd & Patrick Brewer
Comments: 45
Kudos: 162





	Déjà Allez-Vous

**Author's Note:**

> I have no explanation except that it was one in the morning. This has been very minimally edited and the timeline is a mess, but that part's Dan Levy's fault, not mine.

“I can’t believe _you_ sold Allez-Vous,” David says, kicking the lobby door to slam closed behind him. 

Stevie flinches and looks up from the game of solitaire that she’s pathetically losing. 

“It was a dark time.” 

“So exactly how far did you get?” He leans on the desk with his elbows, a mocking smile playing at his mouth, and she slumps back in her chair, turning from side to side a little with the toe of her sneaker. 

“Area manager,” she says, tipping her chin up. She made peace with the embarrassment of this a long time back, but David seems to be able to tilt his head and see right to the things she buried in the back of her mind. 

“Wow.” He widens his eyes and gives her his fake smile. “Somehow I have a very hard time picturing this.” 

His face is still dirt-orange, the color of one of Twyla’s smoothies whenever she remembers that the café has canned pumpkin and adds a few leaves of spinach or a spoonful of cocoa powder to the mix. 

She would laugh — she _should_ laugh; his ego could use the ding — but she’d sat there as the women of the town watched their awkward presentation and then told David and Mrs. Rose about the futility of trying Allez-Vous and she’d felt something weird tugging at her stomach, something like… pity. 

Oh god, maybe she’s going soft. 

His mouth folds on itself, though, so she does a quick cost/benefit calculation and tugs her bag up from its place under the desk. Her wallet is, as always, buried at the bottom, so she dumps the bag on top of the desk to root through the detritus. 

David, because his boundaries are abysmal in some ways despite being impossible to penetrate in others, decides to “help” by going through its contents. 

“Why do you have loose cough drops in here? Are you an elderly woman?” 

“Yes,” she says, deadpan. “I’m actually eighty-seven years old; I just have better skin than you do.” 

“That’s not funny. Oh my god, are you actually reading Pride & Prejudice?” he asks, his face brightening underneath the sludge. He tugs the book out from where it’s stuck on a spare phone charger cord and opens it to a random page, skimming with a small smile. 

“Shut up.” Face warm, she grabs it from his hands and tosses it under the desk, gently because it’s her great-aunt’s copy. It still says _Property of Maureen Budd_ in faded blocky writing just like hers inside the front cover. 

“You’re secretly a romantic.” 

“I will murder you in your sleep.” 

“Look at you, crushing on Mr. Darcy.” He folds his arms and gives her a shit-eating grin, but at least he’s stopped going through her things. 

“I have a key to your room. You wouldn’t even wake up as I smothered you with your pillow. Your sister would probably help me do it if I asked.” 

“You’re sweet. What are you looking for, anyway?” 

She finally finds her wallet and digs behind her Brebner’s shopper card to tug out a plastic card with her photo, name, and AREA MANAGER printed on it. 

“My Allez-Vous membership card. Proof.” 

“Oh my god.” His mouth drops open in sheer delight and for once he is blessedly speechless. He really does have a great smile, she thinks, and then shakes it off. “This is incredible,” he says at last. “Look at you, all young and bright-eyed.” 

“I was going through a phase.” 

“Why did you even sign up? You’re the last person I would’ve guessed to hawk beauty products.” 

“Gee, thanks. I don’t know; Jocelyn asked, I said sure, and we all thought we were getting new cars.” 

“Oh yeah, yours is a piece of shit.” 

“Thank you,” she says sarcastically. He grins and, to her surprise, gives the card back. 

“Thank you for this gift.” 

“You’re welcome. I just need one thing in return.” She slowly slips her phone out of her pocket under the desk where he can’t see and anticipate her next move. 

“Uh oh,” he says, rightfully wary. 

She doesn’t use the l-word lightly but she kind of loves how it feels bickering with him, someone who gets her, who isn’t turned off by the sarcasm and cynicism but actually returns it in kind. 

She’s never really felt lonely or been envious of people like Alexis or Twyla or Jocelyn who make friends wherever they go, but if this is what it feels like to have one, maybe she _has_ been missing out. 

David takes a step backwards, which is perfect, because then she can lift her phone and snap a picture before he even realizes what’s happening. 

“Give that to me,” he commands, diving forward over the desk with surprising athleticism. 

“No fuckin’ way,” she says, laughing, holding the phone behind her out of his reach. “This is _prime_ blackmail material.” 

“Fine, then, give me your card back. Even trade.” 

She eyes him and he stares right back, his hand outstretched, his face orange, his ridiculous eyebrows firmly set. 

“Fine,” she agrees. “Everyone in town has already seen it, anyway. I did manage to sell enough to put down the deposit on my apartment and then after that I stopped caring.” 

David crooks his jaw, clearly processing that, and she hands the card back over. 

“I want my own apartment,” he says finally. 

“I’m sure you do.” 

“Do you think I could sell —” 

“No.” 

“But —” 

“No.” 

The right moment to use this piece of information doesn’t come up right away, but that’s okay. Stevie’s patience pays off five years later when Patrick and David meet her at the café for breakfast the morning after their engagement photo hilarity. 

Patrick slides into the booth next to her, still looking kind of pissed, and David is deliberately avoiding looking at either of them in the way he thinks is subtle. 

Patrick’s still a few shades too close to a sweet potato, so she figures she can guess what the issue is. 

“How many showers are we up to?” she asks, sipping her coffee. It’s nice to have a little caffeine in her when she’s riling David up. 

David slaps his menu down on the table, barely missing her coffee cup. “Can we please be done with this?” 

“Thirteen,” Patrick says darkly, flagging down Twyla. 

“Wow,” she says, trying to keep a solemn face for David. 

“Okay, it was not my fault that Patrick told them to give him the wrong thing.” 

“Yes, and you have never had a tanning mishap.” 

“Of course not,” David says condescendingly, shaking his head. “My complexion is pretty forgiving, and I would never presume to go darker than a natural sun-kissed tan anyway.” 

Patrick, because he knows her and knows when she's building up to something to annoy David with, seems to have perked up a little in the booth next to Stevie and thanks Twyla when she drops off his usual tea and compliments his tan. 

“I just have this vague memory,” Stevie says slowly, reaching into her pocket for her phone. David freezes. “Like, I can picture you over-tanned so _well_. It’s a really _vivid_ mental image.” 

“Mm. Do you have any visual aids?” Patrick asks mildly, catching on even if he doesn’t know what she has specifically, and she’s relieved all over again that David found him. 

"You know, I'm glad you asked. I think I might." 

Six years ago she had no real friends; now she’s got two. She hadn’t known how much fuller her life could be. 

David starts shaking his head and she can tell that this is going to be good. 

Her photos app is not much more impressive now than it was then: their “candid” photos from the night before; the photo of them side-by-side at Ray’s pre-tan; evidence of the leak under her sink to harass her landlord into fixing it; a few tilted and out-of-focus snapshots of the RMG’s new motel from Mr. Rose; instagram screenshots of women in barely-there bikinis lounging artfully by the ocean from Alexis as a “jumping-off point” for David’s bachelor party ( _hell_ no, for several reasons). 

But from way back in 2015 when David was still just a tense, pretentious pain in her ass instead of a less-tense, still-pretentious, grossly-in-love pain in her ass, there’s a photo that she’s made sure to forward to herself to keep through her phone upgrades over the years: David a step back from the desk in the motel’s lobby, in a funky beige jacket with a weird tall collar, his face pumpkin-pie orange, his mouth half-open as he was about to say something undoubtedly dickish. 

She can’t hold back the grin when she tilts her phone at Patrick, angled enough that David can’t see it. 

He fidgets with the cuffs of his sweater, clearly barely restraining himself from lunging across the table. 

Patrick snorts and claps a hand over his mouth, his shoulders shaking. 

“When was this?” he asks, muffled through his fingers. 

“About five years ago,” she says, enjoying the way David’s face goes white. “David and Mrs. Rose thought they’d try a multi-level marketing scheme.” 

“Oh, David,” Patrick says, his eyes going big and sparkly. If it were anyone else she’d be overwhelmed with the urge to run away from the sheer _sap_ , but it’s basically been Patrick’s default setting since they got engaged. 

“It was a mistake,” David says shrilly. 

“Oh, honey.” 

“I didn’t know how bad the bronzer was! I was just testing the product!” 

“Now I know why you insist on testing everything on your wrist first.” 

“ _I was being a responsible businessperson!_ ” 

“I mean, you did this of your own free will,” Stevie says. He glares at her. “Who knew your ‘natural sun-kissed tan’ was cheeto?” 

“Wait, this is the Allez-Vous thing you mentioned?” Patrick asks, taking the phone from Stevie to look at it more closely. 

“Yes,” David says reluctantly. “I should’ve known that reference would bite me in the ass.” 

“Yeah, you should’ve,” Stevie agrees. “Although I don’t think I could ever forget this image. It’s burnt into my brain. It’s what I think of when I think of David Rose.” 

“Mm,” Patrick says, smiling his stupidest, fondest smile at David, who looks disgruntled if a little less tense now that the worst is over. “I wish I’d known you then.” 

“No, you don’t,” David says quickly. 

“I at least could have told you that it was a scam.” 

“We figured it out, thanks. Can you delete the picture now?” 

“Can I send it to myself first?” Patrick asks, zooming in on orange-David’s face. 

David hesitates and glances at Stevie. She shrugs. 

“Fine,” he says reluctantly. “As long as you promise not to divorce me over it. Also, I would like to request a moratorium on the cheeto jokes.” 

Stevie drains her coffee, sensing the moment before it happens. 

“God, I can’t wait to marry you,” Patrick says, his voice getting thick. 

“Aaaand that’s my cue to leave,” Stevie interjects. “Enjoy being nauseating; I actually would rather be cleaning motel rooms.” 

They both give her an amused look and she makes a face at them. Patrick slides out of the booth to let her out and they watch her put her phone in her pocket and sling her bag over her shoulder. 

“David, you’re paying for my coffee,” she says, pulling her hair out from under the strap of her bag. 

“Mm, best wishes,” he sneers. 

“Fond regards to you both.” 

As she leaves them to their breakfast, those two idiots whom she loves more than herself, maybe, she tries to picture telling her past self that she’d be Maid of Honor for the smug asshole who wouldn’t stop bugging her for towels. 2015 Stevie probably would’ve laughed hysterically at the thought. 

Actually, she thinks her cousin’s new girlfriend still sells Allez-Vous. Maybe she can order a gift basket of terrible skincare for a fake-out wedding gift. 

Stevie Budd, loved enough to be in her platonic soulmate’s wedding: who knew? 

**Author's Note:**

> When David is moving out the motel, he finds Stevie's card in the nightstand. He frames it and puts it up with their family photos in the new house until she steals it off the wall. Every once in a while she'll find it again as a forgotten bookmark in a random book, the frame long since reused for something else.
> 
> You can find me at [middyblue](https://middyblue.tumblr.com) on tumblr and reblog [here](https://middyblue.tumblr.com/post/639411720188723200/d%C3%A9j%C3%A0-allez-vous)!


End file.
